Wild bird of Prey
by JTheGoblinKing
Summary: A Labyrinth short story.


Disclaimer: The following is an old Labyrinth fan fiction I wrote for a Labyrinth fan fiction group years ago. Labyrinth belongs to Henson. Most, if not all, of the Labyrinth fan fiction I am going to post here is at least ten years old, if not older. You will see the original dates they were written placed into these documents. These fan fictions predate the canon of Return to Labyrinth.

Wild Bird of Prey

Short Labyrinth fiction

(Prequel)

White in the moonlight, black against the stars...

He was thirteen inches tall, but with his wing spread he seemed quite bigger. His eyes were wide, and black and seemed to stare at everything all at once. To stare at him one could easily think that these penetrating eyes were looking right through you and yet his hearing was the keenest of his senses and many owls have a far keener set of eyes than what he possessed. More sensitive to light than other owls, and prone to hunt only at night, yet able to move about in the light when necessary the barn owl swooped low on the wind current.

His wings- from above- were like caramel mixed with fudge, shades of brown lightly blended together, the underside of which was entirely white. The pelt outlining his face was fairly much heart shaped, the face itself being white with large black eyes surrounded by a brown ring circling each round eye individually.

His wings were like velvet as he silently glided through the darkness.

The icy wind, like the fingers of some unseen specters, tickled through his feathered wings, sending a thrill of pleasure through him no mortal could know. The air moving under his owl belly was like the feeling of a soft hair brush's bristles against your stomach, running down and away in waves of sensation. The stress in his tiny talons amplified as he pressed them close to add to the swiftness of his motion. The muscles in his body strained as he fluttered his wings to gain altitude only to glide on yet another current. It was like invisible hands were lifting him up and tossing him into a void. The ground beneath him curved ever so slightly with the sloping roofs of suburban houses in neat little box formations with tiny shoe box shaped gardens painted green with the unnatural order of modern prefabrication.

Once upon a time the forest could reach up to touch him. Once the cries of wild animals filled the night around him. Once the wilderness had been an inviting place for the haunting and rural antics of farm-prone goblins and mischievous imps. There was time when the world believed in him. There was a time when magick was something the world didn't fear or deny but embraced as an aspect of nature. There was a time ...when people believed in him....

He was torn between two ideals just as he was torn between two lives, a wild bird of prey and a king. He loved change and he loved progress yet at the same time he yearned for the days of old when unhappy parents would beg him to take the unwanted children, when goblins were feared and made mischief of little country villages that didn't know how to banish them.

He swooped down low toward the narrow side streets, dodging a street sign by turning on his side with the grace of an expert flyer. He could smell the dampness in the air. It had rained earlier in the evening. Little desperate droplets of rain rebelled against the notion of conforming to the mud and gasoline contaminated puddle below them but they were doomed. They would dissolve in the morning light or drip away to join their brethren in the mess below.

The concrete below him was like a black river. Each street lamp stung his eyes, blurring his vision with the orange haze they produced, bright and obscuring the three dimensional objects around him. He tried to keep to the blessed darkness, the owl becoming visible in the street lights, dark in the gaps between them. Searching, searching for something...

An instinct beckoned him to keep moving, something that he wasn't sure of. It wasn't natural for his owl self, and it wasn't quite human either, it was something to do with... with what? His destiny?

He heard the truck's horn before he even saw it. The windshield in front of him reflected his own image, eyes wide and assaulted by the headlights. The echoing sound cutting through the air like a knife. No time to cry out the barn owl's screech, no time to dodge it.

The impact made him feel as if his entire body had been dealt a punch or a terrible smack. It seemed that he might physically dissolve and pass through the glass but he did not. It felt like marble, like a wall of solid marble. The truck actually came to a stop, which to him seemed rare but he didn't question it at the time. Who stops when a bird flies in front of your automobile? And as it came to a stop he tumbled, ricocheting off the glass and across the hood, wing over body, body over wing. There was a sickening crack. He felt everything in his tiny stomach begin to rise. There was blood everywhere. Of all the clumsy ways to die!

He fell forward, the lights in his eyes again and concrete below him- concrete rising up to catch him as he tumbled and with a sickening thud landed on the ground in front of the truck. There was blood everywhere, sticky and hot. It was his own. And his left wing would not move. He was too wounded to get away and he had to get away to take his more powerful form to heal himself. The cold concrete under his head was unwelcome. He didn't like the dampness with his pain.

Everything was spinning. He could have sworn he heard the wiring sound of a pinwheel but no, it was a bicycle wasn't it? A young girl on the corner, a bicycle at her side. A pretty young thing with long, dark brown hair. She pitched up the bike's kick-stand with her foot, leaving it there for the time being and she walked to the barn owl...

'Careful.' The sound of a car door slam. It was the driver who hit him. 'That's a wild bird. It might be in shock. Touching it's not a good idea.'

'I can't just leave him here.' She said. 'He's hurt.'

'I don't think he's going to survive the night.' The man said solemnly. 'You might as well just-'

He strained to hear the rest of the statement but everything was going dim. Where his nocturnal eyes once saw depth and colour and shades of light that made object appear to glow where there was no light source to illuminate them- such as tree leaves dancing like tiny flames- and rocks glowing like embers- he now saw shades of gray fading into waves like cold water washing over him. He thought he was drowning.

When his eyes opened next he felt the sickness rise again as he bumped about in spite of the careful slowness of his carrier. He was in a basket attached to the front of a bicycle. He could tell that by the sound. He was bundled inside a cotton sweater now stained with his blood. It felt good, warm in the damp air though his wing was in terrible pain and every bump, every turn made him feel the pain so keenly that he wanted to scream yet he remained quiet.

And he did survey the night and the next. Tenderly cared for in a dark room surrounded by toys and books the girl's music box played a tinkling sound that both bothered his owl hearing and soothed the human part of him all at once. The wing was bandaged tightly with medical tape and something he imagined to be like bandages or gaws. He was delirious so he wasn't quite sure what it was.

And he stared up at the girl as she gently stroked his feathers, not the least bit afraid that he would bite or nip at her fingers with his beak, which he noted to be remarkable. And then he'd sleep. In the days she'd draw the curtains shut as he rested in the cardboard box taking up space on her dresser, the box filled with shredded tissue paper, and not news paper (and a good thing too, the ink felt horrible against his talons and smelt like the hands of a mechanic with his heightened owl senses). She gave him water and on the third day tried to give him a live mouse to eat. When he refused the wretched thing, turning his head away like a stubborn child in disgust at an unwanted meal, she assumed he simply was too weak to take live prey so she tried giving him raw beef. He was not a scavenger! This insulted him! Eventually she dropped a piece of burnt toast into his box by accident while eating breakfast in her room to watch over her 'patient.' That he ate.

While in and out of coherency because of the pain he was in, he might have had one live mouse or a spider that crawled into the box by mistake as he lay there, seemingly helpless with his broken wing. He'd never admit it if he had...

He was strangely humiliated when he produced owl pellets. It seemed to Sarah as if a this particular barn owl, had somehow gone his entire life without producing any form of waste that he looked, in spite of his expressionless face that just seemed to be constantly curious, to be embarrassed. He avoided his own owl pellets as if he didn't know what they were, they seemed to disgust him. He liked the dry, quiet space of the box on her dresser but he could feel his hallow little bones mending and soon he would have to leave the tender young girl who had been gentle with him and compassionate even in his most humble condition.

And he learned about the girl in those days when all he could do was lay there and listen. He knew about her mother. He knew that she dreamt of improbable things. He knew that she believed... And the more he heard, the more he actually came to enjoy life in her room. And the pain wasn't so terrible when she was around, speaking gently to him, ignoring the warnings of others that he was a wild bird of prey and might be diseased. Everyone seemed so afraid of diseased birds. He was surprised no one tried to kill him when she was not around simply for being a barn owl.

And that sad day came when Sarah removed his bandage and opened a window for him. And he fluttered his wings to give them a little test before gliding out over her garden. White in the moonlight, black against the stars.

But what no one knew was that The King of the Goblins had fallen in love with the girl...'


End file.
